𝑨𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑺 • 𝑃𝐸𝑅𝐶𝑌 𝐽𝐴𝐶𝐾𝑆𝑂𝑁 ²

THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
—dumb sea dogs

🗡🗡🗡

  —JUDITH would consider herself acclimated to the heat. She'd lived in ass-crack Texas for a portion of her life and hadn't broken a sweat. She'd been to Mexico for a spring break trip once and relished the triple digit temperature. She'd even gotten into a pack of matches when she was four and burned everything except her skin.

  Her trick?

  Make sure the fire within burned hotter than the sun above.

  But there were times when it was too much. When the mixture of smoke and ashes consumed her lungs and clouded her head enough to make her skin susceptible to heat. The first — and last — time this happened, Judith had lost Bryce Tanner to the Sea of Monsters.

  And now, she could already tell she was walking into another unforgiving heat, this time from the earth's core.

  The stone walls that barred them in glowed like an oven and the air was getting thick with humidity. The tunnel sloped down and Judith could hear a loud roar, like a river, but of metal or tar. The spider skittered along recklessly, Annabeth right behind as her fears paled in comparison to her drive to retrieve the means of reaching Daedalus.

  The roaring increased steadily. After another half mile or so, they emerged in a cavern the size of a Super Bowl stadium. The spider escort stopped and curled into a shiny ball. Judith stooped down to pocket it in her leather jacket ( one she refused to ditch, even in the scorching tunnel ).

  Ahead of them, they scoured Hephaestus' old forge. There was no floor, just bubbling lava hundreds of feet below. They stood on a rock ridge that circled the cavern. A network of metal bridges spanned across it like a web. At the center was a huge platform with all sorts of machines, cauldrons, forges, and an anvil fit for a god in their natural form. Creatures moved around the platform — several strange, dark shapes, too far away to make out.

  "How are we supposed to get in there without attracting their attention?" Percy asked.

  "Who said we don't have to?" Judith shrugged. "Three demigods versus some small monsters, we got this."

  Annabeth shook her head, shooting down that tactic. "Hephaestus just said to find out what they are and report back. We don't have to fight. Stay here, I got this." She put on her Yankees cap and turned invisible.

  Judith grumbled at the no-fight scenario, but she had to chuckle at Annabeth's cool hat. "I love that thing." Her and Percy crouched against an outer wall, their shoulders brushing. "I would do so many things with a hat like that."

  "Like torment everybody?" Percy asked, his mouth slowly smirking, no doubt thinking of all the mischief he could get in as well.

  "Well-deserves torment. And I'd start with the Stoll brothers. Next would be Mark." Judith licked her lips at just the thought of torturing her brother with haunted swords.

  "I have a few vendettas to settle, myself," he confessed. "Not even going to lie, Clarisse is totally on my list."

  Judith pushed him over and he toppled to the ground with a hushed cry. "And you say she has no reason to hate you."